


this endless, angry thing

by Nokomis



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 12:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11921301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: Leia has become a fortress, a calm exterior mercifully blocking the extent of her rage and heartache from the world.





	this endless, angry thing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Luna for a prompt; originally posted [on tumblr](http://nokomiss.tumblr.com/post/164655562007/for-summervillen-who-requested-star-wars-based). My very first Star Wars fic, so of course I go in for the most painful topic available. Prompt:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _I'm worried you're biting off more than you can chew,_
> 
>  
> 
> _everyone says,_  
>  and I laugh  
> and run my tongue hard  
> against the sharps of my teeth. 
> 
>  
> 
> _Look into my mouth._  
>  This endless, angry thing.  
> You have no idea how much I can consume.  
> \- brenna twohy.

Leia has become a fortress, a calm exterior mercifully blocking the extent of her rage and heartache from the world.

She remembers the moment she felt Han’s death reverberate through her – the same abrupt, forceful feeling as taking off in the Falcon, she realizes later – even though she couldn’t remember the moments after; a maelstrom of emotion lifting only with the sound of shattering glass. She’d found herself in her quarters, hands shaking and throat hoarse. On the floor broken glass was scattered amongst the crumbled remains of a flower.

It had been the only flower Han had ever given her after their marriage, and it was the only flower that had ever mattered. She had never figured out the meaning behind the gift – he’d given it to her after their son’s birth, but whether it was a thank-you or an apology for having been light years away, she’d never asked – but its providence was purely Han.

There had been a peculiar species of flower on Alderaan with inky black petals speckled with white like the cosmos itself, and with a stem and leaves such a bright shade of yellow that they’d appeared to be suns bursting from the ground. She’d loved those flowers, and Han had somehow found one, dried and perfectly preserved between two panes of glass.

And now it was dust.

She had swept it away with dry eyes, the delicate dried petals crumbling when she’d attempted to save a sunburst-leaf, and she’d known. She’d known.

She has nothing left.

The children speak quietly around her. They become a blur of Poe’s worried eyes and Rey’s delicate loneliness, of the pilots who soften their brashness around her as if dimming their own light might make hers brighten, of her crew who try to pretend like everything is the same when nothing is, when nothing ever shall be, when truly nothing remains to her.

No one ever speaks the words to her. No one ever says, “Your son killed your husband.” No one ever says, “Your son is dead.” If anyone speaks of it at all, it’s a fleeting whisper, it’s pretty words hiding the ugly truth. Sacrifice. Betrayal. 

Succumbing.

Leia thinks that if she ever did those things, if she ever committed a sacrifice, if she ever betrayed what they believe their general to be, if she ever truly _succumbed_ to the rage that explodes within her…

She thinks the universe itself might be ripped asunder.

So she holds tight to what her father – her true father, blood be damned – taught her, trying her best to quiet her rage through conventional means, through being _good_ , by fighting the war and tearing her enemies down without allowing her blood to dictate who she becomes.

She sends Rey away, hoping the girl will find peace, hoping that she’ll find Luke and return him to her, so that she can have someone to cling to and scream at. Luke has always known how to weather her storms.

She throws herself more deeply into the Resistance, into tearing apart the First Order more thoroughly than they’d ever managed with the Empire, determined to not only destroy their army but also the infectious ideology that has slithered through the universe for far too long. 

The thought of facing the thing that killed her son, the shell she imagines is filled with the same writhing, twisting tendrils of the darkness as Vader, is a thought she keeps locked away, a thought that brings her only heartache and blossoms of the guilt-rage that threatens to become all that’s left of her.

All that once brought her joy are now ashes. The wry smiles that Han would flash her after he’d done something he knew she would disapprove of, smiles she found she missed even more than his most charming ones because those were just for her. She can’t even think about the times she’d held her child in her arms, marveling at the delicate soft skin on his feet and the way his tiny hands had gripped her so tightly. 

She can’t think on her happy memories, and if she focuses too long on the sad she can feel the walls of her fortress begin to crack and crumble.

The rage is all that’s safe for her to carry with her, and so she does, holding it within and letting it keep her back straight and her voice crisp and unshaken. She uses it, because without it…

Without it, she might become a shell, too.

And Leia will not allow anything to take this war from her. Not when there are still battles to be won, not when the enemy has not yet realized what they have created within her. 

Leia is a fortress, and she will withstand this siege. She will win this war.


End file.
